Chocoholics have always thought so -- and some scientists have suspected it -- but the evidence is building: A little chocolate can be good for you.
The darker the better. Earlier research had suggested that chocolate has antioxidant properties, but two new studies are being used to extol the specific benefits of dark chocolate and cocoa that hasn't been heavily processed. They found at least short-term cardiovascular benefits to eating 3.5-ounce dark-chocolate bars or drinking about half a cup of cocoa each day.
"If you can find food products that help vascular health, that people find acceptable and palatable, this is huge," says Carl L. Keen of UC Davis, a chocolate researcher.
Forget about white chocolate, though. The ivory-colored confection contains cocoa butter but lacks the beneficial plant compounds in the ground-up cocoa beans that give chocolate its distinctive flavor, aroma and appeal. You probably shouldn't expect much from milk chocolate, either. It's typically lower than dark chocolate in these important chemicals, called flavonoids, and is higher in fat.
Another recently published study found that chocolate combined with dairy products, either in milk chocolate or by washing down dark chocolate with a glass of milk, neutralizes the flavonoids' benefits. But that's a source of debate among researchers, Keen says.
Based on the latest findings, you should choose from among bittersweet chocolate, semisweet chocolate or sweet, dark chocolate. Cocoa, a powdered chocolate with nearly all the fat (cocoa butter) removed is problematic, because most commercially processed cocoas have lost a lot of their flavonoids.
Chocolate comes from beans produced by the Theobroma cacao tree. First consumed as a beverage by Mayans, Olmecs and Aztecs in Central America and what now is Mexico, it was brought to the Old World by Spanish explorers who noted its medicinal use. In the 1600s and 1700s, Europeans treated a variety of disorders, including angina and heart pain, with chocolate. And although the perception in the last 30 to 40 years has been that chocolate lacks health benefits, that pendulum is swinging back again.
Scientists have been trying to pinpoint the source of chocolate's biological effects for about a decade and to determine whether beneficial effects seen in the lab carry over to real-life chocolate eating. Much of their work indicates that flavonoids -- plant chemicals also found in red wine, grapes, apples and tea -- are the crucial ingredients, said Frances H. Seligson, a food consultant in Hershey, Pa., formerly an associate director of nutrition for chocolate giant Hershey Foods. But chocolate also is rich in magnesium, copper and manganese, all important minerals.
